Subject: Re: [baidarka] Skinboats Rule!
From: wolfgang brinck (nativewater@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Oct 17 2001 - 15:09:23 EDT
--- William Samson <willsamson@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Great comparative account of the various kayak
> types,
> Peter! Lots of things there that I hadn't thought
> about.
>
> I'm a baidarka fan, too, and paddle a somewhat beamy
> (23") baidarka built the Brinck way.
Thanks for the nod, but I want to stress that the
design in my book tries to closely follow the specimen
in the Lowie Museum at UC Berkeley. I can take no
credit for that. The process of building documented in
my book is my best guess for how it was done. I think
I got it wrong in a few places. I now think the
central section of the keelson was placed last. I also
think that cockpit sizing and placement can be done
better than described in my book. In any case, credit
for this excellent boat should always go to the
original builders.
I did have the pleasure of spending a morning with the
boat at Berkeley thanks to Stephen Little Bear who
made arrangements and to Leslie Freund from the museum
who gave up a Saturday morning to spend with us.
I was pleasantly surprised to how close the original
looked to what I had been able to build from the
drawings made by John Heath and David Zimmerly and
supplied by George Dyson. I even got the color right.
Venetian red by the tube from an art supply store is
a surprisingly close match. No big surprises really,
except that the lashing of the ribs was done with
rather a light weight cotton or jute twine. This was
illustrated in Heath's pictures in Contributions to
Kayak Studies but was still a surprise to see in the
flesh. Clearly the major work of keeping the hull
stringers in place was done by the skin.
Another thing that we noticed was that the ribs had
teeth marks on them. The teeth marks only showed on
the inside bends and not the outside. I imagine this
comes from the fact that the wood on the outside is
stretched and marks eradicated whereas compression on
the inside of a bend accentuates dimples caused by
teeth.
>
> My only criticism of the type is that it's not ideal
> for rolling (not that I've ever needed to, in anger)
> mostly because of the high back to the cockpit which
> prevents leaning right back in the same way as you
> can
> with a shallow Greenlander. Most folk I know find
> it
> difficult to 'knee hang' in a baidarka because of
> its
> relatively long cockpit (24" seems usual) unless
> they
> sit well forward. OTOH Aleuts didn't seem to regard
> rolling as an everyday occurrence.
>
I've done plenty of rolling in my baidarkas but
position myself forward before I do so when practicing
or playing. Rolling without sliding forward first is a
little harder because I tend to fall out of the
cockpit which puts me too high up in the boat when I
bring it upright thereby making the last quarter of
the roll more difficult.
Wolfgang
Make a great connection at Yahoo! Personals.
http://personals.yahoo.com
-
Baidarka Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be
reproduced outside Baidarka or Baidarka archives without author's permission
Submissions: baidarka@paddlewise.net
Subscriptions: baidarka-request@paddlewise.net
Searchable archive: http://rtpnet.org/robroy/baidarka
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b27 : Thu Nov 01 2001 - 01:30:03 EST